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October 13, 2013

12 Years as a Slave

Thousands of books have been written about the Civil
War – everything from battlefields
to buttons. And interest has
never been higher than now, with the sesquicentennial in its third year.

Good things all, but one wonders how many of us have
read about what it was like to have been an enslaved human during that time?

The reluctance of doing so is certainly understandable. Many of us just keep that part of
history in the abstract.

I was certainly in that group, but something compelled
me to read “12 Years a Slave.” Written
by Solomon Northup in 1853, a 2013 reprint is on sale. The movie version is due out this weekend, starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Brad Pitt. Director Steve McQueen wrote the
foreword. Toronto loved it and whispers
of Oscar are marking the rounds.

Every year around this time I begin to think about
what books I have enjoyed and any themes that might have emerged. Busy with my own, I haven’t read a lot this year. One I would
hold up as top shelf is “The Unwinding” by George Packer. It was as if John Steinbeck came
back, fired up the Rocinante and took a more piercing look at the
country. In Packer’s book we
find Americans reeling from the effects of the economic depression.

Another tough one to read is “Last Chance for Justice: How
Relentless Investigators Uncovered New Evidence Convicting the Birmingham
Church Bombers” by T. K. Thorne.

As moving as those stories are, “12 Years a Slave”
gripped me with a force I’ve never felt before reading a book. Living as a free man in Saratoga, Northup was
kidnapped and taken to the Deep South.
He experienced kindness from a few “masters,” but there were brutes
whose cruelty reveals the heart of darkness.

Reading those bad parts was very difficult to do. In addition to the savage physical treatment, there’s the killing
of a spirit seen early on in the book when Northrup is being held in a slave
pen close to the Capitol in Washington.

A slave named Eliza thought she was about to be set
free.

Elated
at the prospect of immediate liberty, she decked herself and little Emmy in
their best apparel, and accompanied him with a joyful heart. On their arrival in the city, instead
of being baptized into the family of freeman, she was delivered to the trader
Burch. The paper that was executed
was a bill of sale. The hope of
years was blasted in a moment.
From the height of most exulting happiness to the utmost depths of
wretchedness, she had that day descended.
No wonder she wept, and filled the pen with wailings and expressions of
heart-rending woe.

I usually wait until December to declare my book of
the year. There is no
need to wait this time. “12 Years
a Slave” takes those honors. It is a book and story you must read to better understand the Civil War.